Dr. Rainer Klopp, inventor of the BEMER method, has died. On Monday, May 6th, a sudden peak in blog visitor numbers indicated something has happened, and soon there were the first obituaries on Facebook and elsewhere.

One of these can be read on IMIN-org.eu, the website of the “International Microvascular Net”. Despite its name and self-description, it has nothing to do with microcirculation or vascular research or other scientific activities. It’s a BEMER International front-end, led by outsider physicians, fake doctors, homeopaths and crackpots (more on this on request, probably it’s self-evident to readers).

The obituary has a fine detail. It tells about Klopp’s “only recently completed Institute for Microcirculation“.

That’s clear and no misunderstanding. They, if anyone, know the truth. And that I was correct with my findings about the phantom institute. Hostile comments do not change the facts.

***

ps. Dr. Klopp is gone, but his genius lives on!

– Now in BEMERwater. I can assure everyone, it is as effective as BEMER therapy.

Some years ago, one of Finland’s leading newspapers asked its readers, which is the worst product failure ever in this country. The HumanCharger won that poll unanimously. The public reaction seems now to be the same whatever whenever.

But once upon a time, things were different, when I started the earlightswindle.com-website. It is fairly outdated, but gives a good picture of the situation then, when the media hyped the Valkee device – now renamed “HumanCharger“ – and there were few critical voices as mine. I’m sort of proud still, for having steered the mainstream here./-ed.

This is a follow-up to my classic post about the fake “Institute for Microcirculation” in Berlin, which still has about 100 visitors/day (the post, not the “institute”).

As expected, the Institute now got own premises at the place spotted a year ago. BEMER International obviously used a small sum to make up a physical incarnation of the phantom institute. Here is what it looked like in December 2017:

And by the end of October 2018, the “institute” was opened to some visitors (screenshot from the imin-org.eu website).

The “extraordinarily modern and competent equipment … impressive, enabling completely new possibilities” was not yet unveiled. Some machines and staff are still needed to populate the place. There has not been any “research” published for 5 years.

The institute’s website is down already for a while, probably it will resurface in 2019.*

*update: it has resurfaced 15.1.2019.Don’t hesitate to have a look at the intro video… poor but telling. No new equipment.The other person is Dr.W.Niemer, Klopp’s long-time companion & old-age pensioner.

Of the 5,2 million given by crowdfunders and other private investors last year, 58.000 was left in May 2018. That is probably burned yet, also. The company owed 1,2M to banks and addtional 952K to suppliers. In the books are mainly immaterial rights and contracts – such as the (non-commercial) Space Act Agreement with NASA. No substance.

Now that’s clearly a serious situation, which explains the abrupt stopping of the “Astronaut Training program” in August. The app’s downloads have come to a standstill by October. It’s not far-fetched to expect the app disappear from the Google Play Store and Apple Store within 12 months, as it happened to Cohu Experience’s first app, CarbonToSoil.

In time for Slush 2018, Space Nation seems to come full circle where it started two years ago.

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UPDATE 19.11.2018:

After diving to €0,80 [ask], Space Nation shares were suspended “until further notice” from Privanet’s stock bazaar. The trade register – neither the company nor Privanet – informs about the probable reason.

Space Nation has issued new shares, possibly to pay expenses, at least 15 times since December 2017. These were now registered on Nov 15. Further diluting previous investors’ shares by 205.000, it brings the overall count to 1.708.793. Thus the theoretical valuation would now be well below €1,4M, but as no deals were registered in the last 2 months, it’s surely closer to zero than a million. Last year, Space Nation had predicted it to be one billion by now.

Space Nation Oy (Ltd), formerly Cohu Experience, has now announced to file for bancruptcy. It managed to burn multi-million investments in less than 2 years.

The finnish earlight manufacturer Valkee Ltd has grown sales of its HumanCharger device again by 50%. With only 6 employees (peaked at 21 in 2014), the company made still roughly the same loss as last year, over €1 million. It survived until now on capital shot in by previous investors as convertible loans, amounting to 2-3 million in 2 years. Ernst&Young’s accountants suspect, that Valkee won’t exist through the present fiscal year, unless it gets substantial funding in addition to such loans.

Valkee has given up on Finland, where the HumanCharger is considered a national embarrassment. Sales to US “biohackers” susceptible to all kinds of such scams and supplements go well, especially since earlightswindle.com was unlawfully removed from Google’s index* and there’s no independent information available. (I’ll do nothing about that until the content on the classic site is updated.)

Still, all independent research to date has demonstrated that the fake “light therapy” through the ear canal has only a placebo effect. The company’s budget does not allow for new marketing “research”, and it seems no evidence is needed to ensure international sales.

*the important static site with all the key information about the Valkee case (under earlightswindle.com/index.htm and else) was removed, while the blog is still visible. It looks like the content URLs were removed manually.

UPDATE 21.9.2018:
earlightswindle.com is back in the Google index. It wasn’t me!

Finnish “space tourism startup” Space Nation (formerly Cohu Experience) is struggling to get traction. Their astronaut training appSpace Nation Navigator – which is actually a collection of simple space-themed mobile games – saw little success with the community. Instead of the astronomic user counts which they promised to investors, it hovers around 40.000. And that may be a stretch.

In December 2017, Space Nation forecasted 4.000.000 for today. In reality, they reached 1% of this already down-written prognosis. Even when the app’s late launch is taken into account, it missed the milestone by -90%.

The projection above is taken from a presentation for Space Nation shareholders which was circulated some 9 months ago. The company was mugging for fresh money, again collected by Finland’s Privanet Securities Oy.

The material was not for the general public, but it’s interesting because it gives insights into a failed strategy. Download it here: spacenation-investors.pdf.

Failed highjacking

A takeover of NASA’s MISSION X campaign was planned for Q4 2017. That would have been a major coup: Mission X reaches out to >100.000 school children worldwide, which would be a perfect (though ethically suspect) marketing base.

It did not happen. The only thing Space Nation took over was the slogan. They plagiated the theme.

Especially annoying: With Mission X, kids actually do train. With the Space Nation app, it’s the opposite. Only the least intelligent churnalists could mistake scratching around on a smartphone screen for something related to real astronaut training.

Financial turmoil

The planned profit of 84 million Euro by May 2018 evaporated in the corrected forecast. Now the financial result was projected to -2 million. Taken into account the low user recruitment, the real number could be -4 to -6 million. The company hasn’t made their last balance public. This blog will, when the documents become available.

However, it’s 90 million less than promised to their crowdfunders and other investors.

Another investment round, that was officially announced for Spring 2017, was called off without further notice. Space Nation aimed to pocket another 2,8M from the american crowdfunding platform fundable.com. The 625.000 Euro raised in Finland (according to Privanet) could hardly fix anything. The company will need more funding soon.

Only one thing may rescue the risky enterprise: Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, which is finally at the edge of commercial space flight. The space tourism pioneer could take Space Nation candidates on board – possibly in 2019. Space Nation could win a hard-fought over seat by promising Branson added publicity – but does Virgin need support from a finnish startup that has (quote) nothing than “an app and an idea”?

With the money already raised and the current fees, 20-30 people could go to space without the need for startup bullshit, Slush events, business models and merchandise.

Five years from now, when people think space, they will think Space Nation. (-a finnish entrepeneur)

This blog – as the previous earlightswindle.com – was once reporting exclusively about the multifaceted scamming activities of finnish company Valkee Ltd, maker of the fake “light therapy device” HumanCharger.

Now it seems they are finally phasing out of business. The company is technically bankrupt since March 2017, but now

The finnish trade register says, that in May 2018 the main shareholders LifeLine Ventures, Vera and Merieux forgave the company another 230.000€ convertible loan; i.e. was converted into worthless shares. The same happened to several other such loans during the last two years, rising the amount of burnt money to more than 10 million Euro.

The next months will now be decisive. I am looking forward and will inform as always.

N-Acetyl-L-Cysteine (NAC)-containing supplements are widely propagated for hangover prevention, although there’s been no scientific evidence backing this claims. First-ever results from a placebo-controlled hangover trial now became available.

The popular supplements are useless. NAC does not prevent hangover.

This blog has written extensively in finnish about a scam product by Rohtos Labs from Oulu. Called SUOJA – formerly Detoxformula -, it contains NAC as main ingredience, and was sold internationally.

49 participants had analysable data. They were randomized in groups of 23 and 26. 2/3 were male, race was not recorded. Alcoholism was an exclusion criterium. Outcome measure was the Hangover Symptoms Scale (HSS), which has 13 items á 4 pts max. The worst (but unimaginable) hangover thus would score 52 pts.

Participants drank beer until reaching a blood alcohol concentration of 0.1. The number of drinks was recorded, and NAC 600mg capsules were given, 1 caps for 3 drinks. The next morning, participants filled out the HSS questionnaire.

The results should make NAC sellers and users feel uncomfortable: NAC and placebo had exactly the same effect. The HSS scores were 0-35 and 0-38, respectively. That means, that hangover really occured and the alcohol dose was sufficient – as should have been the NAC dose.

Still worse, NAC had significantly more side effects than placebo. In the Acetylcysteine group, 22% of users experienced adverse effects, while in the placebo group adverse reactions were registered in only 8%.

These results became available a few days ago through the Study results-tab of the trial’s registry entry at clinicaltrials.gov. Ahead or in place of a peer-reviewed publication, they went completely unnoticed by the supplements community.

This demonstrates again, how dietary supplements are used without justification, based only on lab studies. Rarely such useless and potentially hazardous “biohacks” get so cleanly refuted as in this case.

***UPDATE 9.7.2018***

The second, bigger NAC study with 200 participants was now terminated early. Obviously it was deemed futile to try to demonstrate a non-existent effect.